Monday, March 22, 2010

Hey dummies, it's person #1 here guest postin' about a certain webcomic we all know about. First and foremost, I would like to mention that rob is a huge fatass and carl is a meanie. Now that I have insulted y'all, let's get to the comic.

Funny story, actually. Quite recently I told a friend of mine how and why xkcd was going downhill and how it was white-knight-esque pseudo-feminist. That was one day before he came out with 714. I was so happy the moment I read that strip, because of the i-told-you-so routine that was coming my friend's way soon. He ended up greeting me with "Damnit, person. You might be right." that day. Great fun.Anyway, the reason I am telling this story is that today he was actually the one that lead me to read the strip when I did. He MSN'd me today saying "Son of a bitch", "Why must you ruin things for me.". I like to imagine he put a period instead of a question mark because he knows how much I like making people, specifically him, suffer. He also thought the author of xkcd was named "Rupert Murdock", which is actually kind of a badass name.

But my actual point was that keeping these words in mind, I went to the comic. It's hard not to be biased when you're writing a hate blog, it's even harder if your friend tells you something is shit ahead of time - but it's not even that. I looked at the comic. I read it, went back to him, said "I don't get it", went back to the comic, read it again, and asked him "wait, is this actually the joke? Inspector Gadget has a lot of crazy shit 'under his belt'? That's it? That was a joke in the show too, Randall just made it dirty". Ok that may be paraphrased to insert that hilarious pun.But yes, that is it, my friend confusedly reassured me. Huh. Well. That's not funny.

I'm going to go more in-depth on the actual joke, but I wanna talk about something else first

That doesn't really look like inspector gadget. a big part about inspector gadget was not only his goofy behaviour, but also his looks. Notice that if you take away the face and the hair, you aren't left with much of his original personality or charme. Could randall possibly have picked a more retarded choice in terms of his comic gimmick? The point of a comic is that you don't spell everything out, you show it. Your characters not having faces does not make this easier. Randall did kind of a good job at making him look around and showing that no one is there, but only considering the arbitrary restriction he set himself.

The point of that is not to prove that I'm a shitty artist, my point is that faces bring a whole new atmosphere to the comic, and allow randall to express himself better. But since you will all just bitch at me that this is his style (this is a criticism of exactly that, by the way - his style) and that it's just something I have to accept, let's move on.I'm not done with the art, though. Why is he shown so far away in the last two panels? There's no walls, no anything. It makes you think he shrinked. Randall, we're not asking you to draw us an oil panting in the background of your comics, but please, at least draw a line that shows us that your characters are not constantly in limbo. Also, I get that you want to show that he's alone, but too small. You have to realize that since you've drawn nothing, the borders of the panel are the first possible boundary of the room. What this means is that Gadget is standing in a hugeass room (both in height and width). The fact that it is empty is usually not a big deal since your stick figures are closeup, and their surroundings are unimportant - in this part however it plays a big role since the idea is that inspector gadget is all alone, but alive. You're getting one of these points accross.ALSO, what's up with his arms not being down? That's weird, man. He probably realized he drew him too small to pull that off. So that makes it two points for bigger inspector.

Doesn't that look far less distracting and better than xkcd's version? Yes it does, shut up. Where's YOUR criticism of xkcd? What gives YOU the right to criticize my criticism?

Well, that leaves one thing. The humor. Sigh. Here's the thing, Inspector gadget was meant to be entertaining, and the fact that he had whatever the fuck seemed convenient in his hat was a joke of the show. What randall did was essentially a conversation I imagine some high schoolers are having somewhere right now. "Dude! What if Inspector Gadget had like naked chicks in his hat so he can look at them whenever he wants""THAT IS AWESOME! HIGH FIVE! I wish I had naked chicks in my hat, man. Inspector Gadget ROCKS". We've established that it's a joke of the show, so what did Randall do? He took something that didn't belong (as it was a children's show) and mixed it with an unfitting concept. Actually, it's not like he showed an emo kid taking care of orphans, he just took something innocent and made it dirty. Rule 34, basically. Except it's not really very imaginative or funny. Hell, even if we completely ignore the bluntness of the joke, he still just showed a dude talking. It's not he even made an effort to at least surprise the reader through action (Maybe by inspector gadget pulling a dildo out of his hat or some shit. It still wouldn't be funny, but it'd at least be a little more creative than just saying something stupid.)

And then we have the alt text. A 2girls1cup joke? Really? Again? Actually, not joke. Just reference. The difference is that he thinks he can get away with just mentioning something, instead of deriving humor from it. LAME.

But enough about the comic, let's see what the forumites have to say

"go go gadget decaying comic"

"...Well congratulations, you've made Inspector Gadget unfunny and disturbing. I didn't even think that was possible. Go go gadget anti-comic!

It's like anti-hero, you see, except not at all interesting. And gone gone gadget repetitive lame joke intro phrase."

This, basically. While half of the forumites thought it would be hilarious to just say "go go gadget" and then a vague reference to the comic or anything really (implicitly giving randall credit for saying something unusual after go go gadget), a lot of them were also disappointed with the comic. Understandable.

"Just gonna say, xkcd been going downhill recently. Maybe it's just me, but it has a really different feel to it..."

"Point of order: "Lesbians doing it" is an event or possibly fantasy, not a "gadget."

A video camera and cup would be a pair of gadgets, but I don't think they ever appeared in the cartoon. (Binoculars may come in handy if his legs go off instead)."

This guy is funnier than the comic. That's really not saying much, though.

"Funny comic, awful (but predictable) mouseover."

I'm slightly uneasy about both the fact that he liked the comic and that he PREDICTED a 2girls1cup joke at the mere mention of lesbian sex. Poor guy.

"Go go gadget people getting butthurt over a difference of opinion on what is/isn't funny"

I like how this guy calls a bunch of people who just said they didn't like the comic or that xkcd was getting worse butthurt, because he was getting "butthurt" over a bunch of people not liking his awesome favorite webcomic. I'm guessing he doesn't know about this site.

This was a pretty terrible comic, but I think it'd be even worse with your proposed zoom in the two last panels.

Zooming out to my mind illustrates that after looking around in the second panel, Mr. Gadget has found that he is alone; we can see a larger area around him and there's no one there. Somehow illustrating this is necessary for the comic to be coherent.

Let's also be clear about something else:You completely misinterpreted the joke.The joke is not that Inspector Gadget has lesbians in his hat. It's that anything he prefaces with "Go go gadget" seems to appear from under his hat, as if magically. He says "Go go gadget lesbians doing it" not because he has lesbians "doing it" under his hat, but instead because he is furtively hoping that if he "go go gadget"s them, they will appear. That's why the comic's called furtive; it's Inspector Gadget hoping he has lesbians under his hat. The joke is that his hat might work like that: Anything he announces appears magically under it.

That line "Doesn't that look far less distracting and better than xkcd's version? Yes it does, shut up. Where's YOUR criticism of xkcd? What gives YOU the right to criticize my criticism?" reminds me a lot of Maddox. It's okay, it's really funny :)

Part of the "go go gadget" gags in Inspector Gadget was that it wouldn't go according to plan. The mallet was a common choice in the show, a pair of scissors would also be a possibility.

The alt-text was too wordy. It could be improved, while still keeping the same joke, by just keeping the bit about the cup. Maybe the cup should've been part of the visual gag? In either case, a simple "Yowzaa" would also work.

I like that you at least included the alt-text in your analysis Person#1. I was starting to get worried there that you kept going on and on about the strip that, as you said, had very little going on in it. xkcdexplained left it out entirely which is a huge mistake here. The thing is, like you said, there is no joke in the comic. The whole comic then appears to be a set-up for the joke in the alt text. A really, horrible, unfunny, slightly disturbing, moderately confusing, juvenile setup for a horrible, unfunny, moderately disturbing, tired reference joke. I don't think Randal intended the strip itself to be anything more than that, and it certainly isn't regardless of what he thought he was doing, so criticizing it for lack of humor is kind of pointless.

I can kinda see how the Inspector Gadget 2girls1cup concept might be kind of funny with him gadgeting out the equipment... maybe. But the setup was absolutely horrible, and confusing, and it doesn't quite make sense, and it's so annoyingly juvenile. I can't even enjoy making juvinile sex jokes anymore because xkcd does it so horribly that I'm constantly paralyzed with fear that people will think I'm as lame as Randal if I crack a little sex joke (I mean, we're talking about reducing the quality of my life here. Possibly at the expense of increase the quality of everyone else's life but fuck them anyway. If randal stops making really lame juvinile sex jokes there's enough room in the universe for me to make moderately lame juvinile sex jokes without fear of having my eyes stabbed out). I really think Randal just runs with ideas for jokes even if he can't figure out how to make them funny with proper setups and pacing and making sure they actually make sense. You know, stuff that comedians do to turn abstract ideas about things that are kinda weird into jokes.

@Person#2 Are you saying that Randal is also so stupid that he mixed up the order of the last two panels? I would totally buy your explanation if the last two panels were reversed in order. You would have to zoom out AFTER he said that to demonstrate that he he was just pathetically hoping that he could bring himself the pleasure of watching two lesbians doing it simply by calling it out and had failed. That would indeed be a joke. Not a good one, but a joke in line with xkcd norms. Also you would have to redefine the word "furtive" to mean what you just said it means instead of what it actually means for that to make sense. Either you're an idiot who can't use a dictionary reading things into the comic, or Randal is also an idiot who can't use a dictionary and is also so dumb that he screwed up the order of his frames, or both. If we changed the name of the 717 to something like "hoping" or "please let this work" (just off the top of my head, you could probably do better with the same concept) and switched the order of the last two frames you'd have a point. But they're not and you don't.

I have been looking forward to seeing this one get torn to pieces since I saw this travesty of a comic earlier today. Good work. Even though you simply added a few lines to the face, it was 100% more clear that this was Inspector Gadget in the first two completely unnecessary panels. In fact, this could have been a great one-panel strip. To add the icing on the cake, it should have been worded "two girls doing it", since that would make them, inherently, lesbians. Saying "two lesbians doing it" sounds like something a middle-schooler would say while adjusting his 1-inch thick glasses, followed by a snorty chuckle.

Since I'm a first time commenter here (and former xkcd fanatic) I'll also add that I love the blog here, big time.

err, as much as adding a face and hair to the Inspector was a good idea, now he looks like Jay Sherman (everyone remembers The Critic, right?) I mean yes it's better than nothing, but if we really wanted to have a stick figure look like Inspector Gadget, we should just give him the long face he had, add the hair and that facial expression and it really does look like him

To be honest I don't like it when people make criticisms like the one I'm about to make because it's not really a valid reaction to "is this a good comic or not?"; it's just small-minded nitpicky whinging.

Or belts, how come the belt seems to be wrapped around something solid if his body is only one-dimensional? Or well just look at how dorky his hands look poking out of the sleeves.

The other thing is, drawing clothes on stick figures in the name of characterisation carries with it the implication that all the non-celebrity stick figures are running around in the nip. If you want a recognisable person, just drop the usual style and draw them properly. Because stick figures & clothes is weird. I don't like it.

- - - -

I think you could make a pretty funny (albeit probably short-lived, but hey) comic based around the various complications and contradictions involved with being a stick figure.Like how they can't digest food, or they can't tell what way they're facing, or how pointing at something is the same action for them as punching. Stuff like that. You'd run out of material pretty soon but...hmm actually maybe it wouldn't be all that funny...

Oddly, no edits to the Inspector Gadget article that are related to xkcd. Two edits were made the day before this comic went up though, one that deleted the entire page and replaced it with "go go gadget robopenis!" and another edit that deleted the entire page and replaced it with an ASCII penis.

i'm a huge xkcd detractor. usually agree with most of the posts in this blog. xkcd sucks, a lot.

but this comic made me laugh - not out loud of course (i mean it's still xkcd after all), but to myself. for some reason i found it pretty damn funny, perhaps because of the stark lack of artwork and very to-the-point punchline. so yeah, i liked this one.

I like the idea that Inspector Gadget goes out into the middle of nowhere to watch porn. It seems like his logic to go into a wide open space rather than a bedroom or something.

Thing is, both that and the hat/coat combo are limitations of stick figure drawing. You'd think Randall would figure out the limitations and not write jokes that require detailed art.

As for the joke, it really is just "haha, kids' cartoons have sex". It's not unfunny, but it's been made before.

(Note: References are not jokes in and of themselves. Notable people who think otherwise are Seltzer/Friedberg. Not sure why the guy who thinks Monty Python quotes are sad doesn't get this, but whatever.)

Oh, and I love how Randall can go from "in my porn, people fuck" pseudofeminism to almost literal objectification of lesbians. Wonder what the feminists have to say about this one. LOL.

This is one of the few xkcd comics I agree are truly horrible. I've been refreshing this page since it came out to see you rip it to pieces. I take issue with your criticism of the artwork, however; I found it quite refreshing to see Randall draw something more than a stick-figure.

"Oh, and I love how Randall can go from "in my porn, people fuck" pseudofeminism to almost literal objectification of lesbians. Wonder what the feminists have to say about this one. LOL."

Yep. Pretty old news, though, the fact that Randall can't make up his mind on his ideological stances. Pretty "Munroenic".

"Stickfigures.

Clothes."

Keep, I made this same point back at that Halloween/Back to the Future comic. The whole implications of having your comic art done in stick figures should be contemplated further, but Randall just won't do that. If he does, he'll get caught on a lot of complications and may likely be forced to actually draw things, and he'd never want that. Nope, better just ignore that and cash in on the usual loyal blind fans. Yay, meritocracy!

"err, as much as adding a face and hair to the Inspector was a good idea, now he looks like Jay Sherman (everyone remembers The Critic, right?) I mean yes it's better than nothing, but if we really wanted to have a stick figure look like Inspector Gadget, we should just give him the long face he had, add the hair and that facial expression and it really does look like him"

Cam, that's what RANDALL should have done. Person did enough just by illustrating the concept, the rest is pretty much implicit -- and pretty much impossible, since we know Randall refuses to do anything that adds effort to his comics, like elongating his stick figures' heads so they look more like the character they're supposed to represent.

I thought it was better that he wasn't instantly identifiable as Inspector G in the first two panels, because then the last panel acted as a reveal. In other words, he used his so-called substandard art to add to the effectiveness of the punch line.

I don't like the lazy lesbian reference though. It would have been better to choose some other embarassing item, like "Go go gadget nose hair remover".

Minimalistic art style is no excuse for being lazy. I thought it detracted from this particular comic because, the more I look at the stick figure in the trenchcoat, the more it looks like Rorschach or some flasher pervert, and the less it looks like Inspector Gadget, simply because, as has already been stated, Gadget ACTUALLY HAS A FACE.

Unrelated to the comic, but I kept noticing an inordinate number of people using the word Jehova on the XKCD forums. I thought at first that it was some sort of weird meme there but then I realized that the word God is censored to Jehova when you post. Any idea why this is?

Two theories: one, Randall (or some other admin on the forums) is an idiot and thinks he's being sensitive to Christians etc. by censoring a word they often take offense to. This would work better if it weren't more likely to piss them off.

Two, Randall or some other admin on the forums thinks he's making a hilarious point against Christians etc. who complain about the use of the word 'God' as a vulgarity by changing it to something that's likely to really piss them off.

No Christian would ever do that, though. Like, there are plenty of Christians out there who don't mind people saying 'god' as a vulgarity, because God is not actually the name of God and the commandment goes 'thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain' or whatever.

Jehovah actually being the name of God, this is basically a deliberate violation of the second or third commandment (depending on your particular orthodoxy). If it is pro-Christian then it was done by someone who has never actually interacted with Christians. It reads like it's mostly supposed to piss off Christians to me.

"OK, that's three. Complainers, whingers and absurdly indignant killjoy assclowns are now subject to bannination for the duration of Mod Madness without further warning at my discretion. My whim, actually. Especially if the complaint appears in this thread where I am really really likely to see it. I don't care about annoying people with word filters this week. I understand and accept that some of you find it annoying. And I don't care. Shut up and let the mod staff have some fun for a few days."

how dare somebody have an opinion (mind you I have neve been particularly fond of the xkcd forum admin team)

"how dare somebody have an opinion (mind you I have neve been particularly fond of the xkcd forum admin team)"

It's pretty common to communities like the XKCD forums: the admins essentially feel that it's your privilege to be there, so anyone who doesn't cater to their whims is banned. This belief pervades every level of the forum's culture, so the forum members also viciously attack people who deviate from forum norms.

Fuck, seriously? A moderator on a forum posted that? It's okay to enjoy yourself as a mod, but you should never appear capricious or malicious in your moderating. It's the best way to kill a community. Whoever posted that should get their head out of their ass.

yes, I am definitely being hypocritical by describing a common tendency in tight-knit forum communities like XKCD. this blog has a super tight-knit community and isn't basically thread after thread of endless flame wars over shit that doesn't matter at all

"Hey, we've decided to act like immature fucktards for a week. Intelligent discourse on whether or not this is a good idea is impossible, as that would be inconsistent with the tenets of immature fucktardery. In order to maintain consistency with the tone of the week, we will throw a temper tantrum and abuse our power if anyone disagrees with us or calls us out on our immature fucktarded behavior."

I used to go to GameFAQs until I got banned for ridiculously minor infractions. Specifically, I insulted people non-stop for about six weeks, and was punished with a serious of mild but escalating restrictions on my ability to post. When I continued to relentlessly insult people, I was banned.

Fascists.

You know, it's funny, people on GameFAQs do complain a lot about how arbitrary its moderators are, but I think it's one of the sites with the very least capricious moderating body. Especially if you compare GameFAQs to any amateur forum, such as a webcomic's. The main issue is just that there's a couple hundred mods on GameFAQs dealing with a couple million registered users. Admittedly, only a few thousand of them are active at any given time, but it's not like every moderator is constantly alert either.

There's actually a pretty well-spelled-out body of rules for when you'll get moderated, and the policy of how punishments is determined is pretty easy to figure out and pretty consistently-applied. They don't radically change what's bannable on a whim.

I have NO problem with the drawings on the subject comic, although I agree the too-tiny last panels were ill-advised. The coat and hat were quickly explained by the go-go text, the combination of stick figure and drawn coat is not an issue for me, and the look-around swivel was clear.

The problem is the comic is utterly witless and illogical, even or especially in the context of the literally cartoonish Inspector Gadget. Lesbians will appear as gadgets, presumably protruding or emanating from him? This is funny? No. This is stupid.

Rob, it's Emily. I really don't know how to tell you this, but I just found this site and it's really changed how I see you as a person. I don't think we can go on like this with me knowing what a sanctimonious prick you are. I'm leaving you Rob.

rob:all i know is that you're full of shit.and btw: you do know that it's a great pleasure for me when you waste hours and hours of your precious life on those fruitless and uninspired rants and comments on this blog, right?and please spare us your phony shit about how little time this actually takes, because like i said before: you're full of shit.thank you and goodbye

This is by far the absolute worst criticism of xkcd I've ever read. xkcdsucks is seriously going downhill. Yes this comic sucks, but your critique is like somebody vomited words on a page and called it criticism. Its just one long ramble making very few good points.

You keep going on about the art. Yeah we get it, xkcd has shitty art. But that's been the critique in the last 50 posts.

Nope. God's name in Hebrew without vowels is YHWH. When vowels were added, rather than take God's name in vain, the vowels of Adonai (lord) were placed between the letters. Represented in English by LORD instead of just Lord.

When the Bible was translated out of Hebrew, the translator failed to realize that it was two words inter-spliced, and thought that Yahowah was God's name. Except, this was a German translator, so Jehovah.

On top of that, Jehovah's witnesses must have forgotten that the word is German, so they took to pronouncing a j and v instead of y and w.

It is in fact the gross mistake at God's name that should offend Jews and Christians. Or they could get a sense of humor.

(Sorry, wild divergence, but this bit of trivia is one I find particularly interesting.)

Incidentally, even though Inspector Gadget is a buffoon, he should at LEAST be adult enough to say "having sex".

This is by far the absolute worst criticism of xkcdsucks I've ever read. Anonymous article bashing is seriously going downhill. Yes this article sucks, but your critique is like somebody vomited words on a page and called it criticism. Its just one long ramble making very few good points.

You keep going on about people going on about the art. Yeah we get that you get that xkcd has shitty art. But that's been the critique in the last 50 comments.

I love the whole "god's name" thing. It's so full of intricate rules. I had no idea they had actually spliced together words to keep from offending him. That's so... I'm sure there's a proper medical term for it, but it sounds like god, and the people talking about him, suffer from a cross of autism and ocd. It's very reminiscent of coming up with rules about which tiles to walk on.

Following both the xkcdsucks and xkcd comic threads, I've almost noticed a blending of the two. It seems like more and more Anons come here to (when not choking on their own drool) try to troll this blog. Meanwhile, looking over at the XKCD individual comic threads for the truly terrible comics (like this inspector gadget piece of shit), it seems like it's in equal measure people calling in to say the comic sucks while the other half is the remnants of the diehard circle-jerkers.Looks like xkcd's falling popularity is... well, falling faster.

I hate xkcd as much as everyone else, but some of these criticisms are weak. Firstly there's nothing sexist about this comic. It merely shows Inspector Gadget to have crude, unrefined taste. Secondly, the fact that 'two lesbians doing it' doesn't fit into the usual gadget template isn't what makes this comic not work.

Anonymous who talked about kosher laws: could they be even more hilarious than the name thing? I know about the "no pork" and "no work on saturday", and that the latter gets interpreted in many different ways. For example, in one fancy jewish neighborhood in one undisclosed city, on saturdays they hire people to stand in elevators (in apartment buildings!) and press buttons for those more orthodox jews who consider button-pressing to be work.

Anonymous 7:29, Ryan North's feat is that he manages to come up with funny and thoughtful dialogue that *fits those pictures* almost every time. I mean really fits the facial expressions. That's nothing short of amazing.

Suppose the average habitable lifespan of a planet is one billion years--conservative, since the earth has been fecund for four times that. Let's also suppose that the average length of an intelligent civilization is one hundred thousand years. That's fairly generous. You could then have ten thousand civilizations on the same planet, none of whom ever existed concurrently.

One resolution of the Fermi paradox. There HAVE BEEN millions of alien cultures, that never existed simultaneously.

It's also why we wouldn't necessarily detect them. Sure, if a species ten thousand light years away from us broadcast continuously for ten thousand years, we would expect to pick up on it. But if there was a relatively brief blurt of communication--say they broadcast continuously for ten thousand years, but did so three hundred million years ago--we wouldn't notice. We've been listening for alien cultures for an extremely short period of time, in evolutionary terms and even moreso in cosmological terms.

XKCD 718 was funnier the first time, when it was called 384 and had a punchline. Also, there's a Goddamned typo (pracitce) in the alt text, which is unacceptable for a supposedly intellectual webcomic.

"Nope. God's name in Hebrew without vowels is YHWH. When vowels were added, rather than take God's name in vain, the vowels of Adonai (lord) were placed between the letters. Represented in English by LORD instead of just Lord."

Although 718 isn't funny in it self (you could make up as many such formulas as you like), there might be the possibility that this comic is a parody of statistics (when you consider the alt-text): making up a formula that leads to the same results as you experience when doing research, but that basically is worthless.

To comply with the culture on this blog:

Maybe this strip is aparody of xkcd itself: You can make up as many strips like this as you want, that are unfunny, give no insight, and are basically pointless.

Oh hey sweet, I went to post how today's comic Flake is "junk math" and found out... I've been banned! I did not even see that post saying they would capriciously ban people on a admin fiat about it. I don't know why, but it made me really really angry. I shot off a quick e-mail pointing out that I only read the original post of the topic (why would I want to read pages and pages of people circle jerking how good this mod madness thing is?). I was actually mad enough to send the following to Randall's contact address on his "blag". I am sure he doesn't give a shit, but I had to at least let him know that his forum mods (oh should I say "gods") are asshats. BTW - I tried to keep it civil and maybe even sucked up a little bit in order to curry favor and get him not to dismiss my claim because I "made him mad".

Here it is:I am almost certain that this has no weight in your life and that you probably won't care enough to do anything, but as your forums are representative of you, I feel that I must write you about this.

Currently, the mods on your forum are running some sort of "Mod Madness" where words are replaced by other words. A few of these replacements were mildly offensive to me (mod->god, God->Jehova for example) and in general I think it is just stupid and not very much fun in my personal opinion.

I did not get very angry though and simply posted "This is pretty much dumb". Your admin then BANNED me from the forum for this. Apparently, somewhere buried in the topic, he said he would ban people who did not kowtow to their whims.

I just cannot believe that I do not have the freedom to protest the worthiness of something on the xkcd forums. I thought xkcd as a concept was supposed to be all about it being okay to be different and have different opinions. I could see a ban if I were trolling people hard, but I just said "this is pretty much dumb". I guess I could justified my opinion more, but it doesn't seem to matter to your power hungry forum leaders who write tripe like:

"OK, that's three. Complainers, whingers and absurdly indignant killjoy assclowns are now subject to bannination for the duration of Mod Madness without further warning at my discretion. My whim, actually. Especially if the complaint appears in this thread where I am really really likely to see it. I don't care about annoying people with word filters this week. I understand and accept that some of you find it annoying. And I don't care. Shut up and let the mod staff have some fun for a few days."

There is nothing fun about being banned. He didn't even remove the post I made for goodness sake. He is just enforcing a totalitarian yes-man regime where only those who are willing to pretend like the mods are oh so funny and witty and great because they were given some meaningless web authority are allowed to have fun.

I would appreciate if you reprimanded your administrators for this behavior and got my account reinstated immediately.

I also created a new account "modmaddnessprotest" for the duration of my ban. While not saying anything about mod madness as a game, I did protest the bannings. I wonder how long before they kill that account too. :)

In my rage about the forum stuff, I got distracted. Malethoth: I have frequented gamefaqs since 2001. You are right about the rules being crazy strict there, though I don't think it is a necessarily bad thing. In my opinion, for the most part it keeps the community in line and discussion civil, especially compared to some of the spinoffs that exist (luelinks for example)

That being said, I must wholeheartedly agree that the one good thing about the site is relative consistency. It gets messed up when new mods are first chosen, but for the most part, the site is moderated consistently and there is at least a form of recourse to complain to a higher up mod or admin if there are problems.

Today's Dinosaur comics isn't very worthwhile until you read the title text. Then it surpasses my expectations. We all know Mario 3 is the best video game ever, except it could have been better with more goomba sock!

Dear god. Mod madness. I've never seen anything so dumb defended with such open assholery. I wonder what the mechanism is for choosing mods on those boards. Did Randy pick the initial mods and then it was like, "if you trust the person, you can make him a mod, and he gets the same right"? A couple of years ago the mods sounded like nice, intelligent people.

I'd like to see a graph comic that showed the retards creeping in. Maybe plotting "friend-distance from Randall" versus "idiocy"?

@marsman57"Currently, the mods on your forum are running some sort of "Mod Madness" where words are replaced by other words. A few of these replacements were mildly offensive to me (mod->god, God->Jehova for example) and in general I think it is just stupid and not very much fun in my personal opinion."

I agree that some of that stuff is pretty offensive. I wonder why it says God->Jehova instead of the more accurate God->"Purportedly Magic Fairytale Character"?

One thing I used to do was say "go go gadget" before doing something incredibly mundane. As if it were an actual achievement. "Go go gadget pen," and then take a pen out of my pocket and start writing, for instance.

I'm sure there's a joke in there about an unemployed Inspector Gadget, who gets laid off the force but continues to say "Go Go Gadget" as he goes about his daily life.

"Go Go Gadget Knife and Fork!"... he rummages in a drawer for a few seconds."Actually, I think I sold my cutlery for beer money. ... Damn."

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Divided into two convenient categories, based on whether you think this website

Rob's Rants

When he's not flipping a shit over prescriptivist and descriptivist uses of language, xkcdsucks' very own Rob likes writing long blocks of text about specific subjects. Here are some of his excellent refutations of common responses to this site. Think of them as a sort of in-depth FAQ, for people inclined to disagree with this site.